THE FP
/2\BAM

by nana

Pll have to admit: I’m kinda pissed off at the
world. Not in an entirely bad way, it can be used
constructively, but pissed. Off enough. A big rea-
son is Adam West snubbed me. Me! Does he
know he is dealing with? Ok, | didn’t really get
rejected by him directly but | hunted down and
emailed: publicists, reporters, webmasters and
his agent with nothing to show for it but electron-
ic hot air. The only reply | ever got was from
some guy who has devoted his entire life to run-
ning a website devoted to the 1960's TV show
‘Batman’. Quaint isn’t it? However he was the
one guy who took enough time out of his day
from in between sitting in front of his computer
and masturbating to pictures of Robin (also in
front of his computer) to email me back. His
agent? | don’t know. He’s probably hobnobbing
with people like John Ritter. (Just as a sidenote
I'll probably get an email from his agent in a week
saying something similar to: “Sorry about the late
reply, old chum, | was giving birth to an endan-
gered monkey for charity. By the way, Adam
West would love to do the interview. He will
arrive on your birthday with a cake and, don't
worry about entertainment, he's bringing Hall and
Oates”) So now what? | now have to turn this
amazing interview with Adam West, which
promptly turned into vapor that not only stung my
eyes and genitals, into some kind of “article”
which is “readable”. Hopefully informative as well.

Bruce Wayne is a rich-ass honky from Gotham
city. He’s so rich he can afford a bat/animal
shaped cowl and a car that has a kind of ‘cat/ani-
mal/maybe-supposed-to-look-like-something’
grilled car. And he has a young boy follow him
around in scaly Peter Pan shorts and he has a
butler. He has a helicopter and a jet. He has a

eS

mansion and a giant secret hideout under the
mansion. He has all kinds of neat things that he
has secretly made and than Batmanized by taking
the neat thing and adding the word ‘Bat’ in front
of it (so telephone becomes ‘Bat’-phone, see”).
He has a degree in criminology. He’s white but
he certainly can dance. His Batusi is a classic
dance move. However pretending to be cool and
doing this dance step in front of your friends
makes you lame. | am very lame since | do this at
least once a week.

| actually wondered that the prospect of talking to
Adam West at length was just so hilarious, so
surreal and so amazingly lame/cool that it would
never happen. It appears | have proved myself
right (for now). And it does add to the allure and
mystery (at least for me since I’m the one who
tried to talk to him about possibly having lived a
pedophiles dream on TV) of that which is Adam
West. | also wondered how | would compose
myself talking to him. This was one of TV's
brightest stars. My biggest fear is the same as
when you interview anyone and that is of choking
on your words and not being able to be precise
and careful in asking the “right” questions. The
ones that got to the bottom of things. The ones
that exposed something. To bring an emotion
bubbling out of him like milky-vomit and maybe
even bring him to the mental state that would

allow him to share personal information with the
students of an art and design factory from
Canada. How does he feel about television him-
self having been such a large (well, smallish-large)
part of furthering a media “culture” that destroys
minds, creativity and uniqueness? Wouldn't you
feel bad sucking the life of children under the
guise of “entertainment”? It’s a double-edged
sword. Video certainly killed the radio star but |
still like to watch Batman because of it’s nostalgic
charm, even though television is successfully
killing off the brains of most the public that have
access to it. | would explain this in more detail
but the part of my brain that handles this type of
articulation was killed early in life watching TV.

Adam West...What fun we could have had. |
already miss you and | never knew yea. | was
excited about maybe being the first to talk about
him playing Bruce Wayne (that white, powerful,
rich, virile phallus of a man) firstly and Batman
(that white, powerful, rich, virile phallus of a man
now wearing cowl) secondly.

To make a long story short | wanted to ask Adam
West about his most famous TV role and his
thoughts about what it was that made playing a
man of dubious muscle tone who had serious
problems about speaking slowly and about having
a strangely subtle homoerotic relationship with an
underage boy in a time of American political and
racial turmoil so appealing. Maybe it was just a
TV show and these are not really relevant ques-
tions for Adam West but for sociology majors,
but, fuck it. I’m having a fucking bad day. ia)